I looked at the paper in my hand. Writing. In big letters. Spelling errors. Whoever wrote this, can’t have gone far in school, I thought. Why, even I, only in Standard Three, would know how to write all the words written here. And I would spell all of them correctly too. Corrected, this is what the papers said:
YONK’ IBLOUVLEI IYAFUDUSWA. ISIWA ENYANGA. KULE NYANGA IZAYO - 1 JULAYI. ABAZICELELAYO BAYA KUNCEDISWA NGELORI.
The message was simple and direct:
ALL BLOUVLEI WILL BE RELOCATED – MOVED TO NYANGA. NEXT MONTH – 1 JULY. FOR THOSE REQUESTING IT, THERE WILL BE LORRIES TO HELP WITH THE MOVE.
A shock wave split my body. It was true, then? Tat’uNonjayikhali’s story was happening? I would be lying if I said the fulfilment of Tat’uNonjayikhali’s words thrilled me. Or that the thought of a new adventure filled me with excitement and anticipation.
Although I did not ask myself why this should be so, instantly, I was assaulted by a vague disquiet. Now that it seemed more real than ever before that we might leave this place that I had not thought of as one that was beloved to me, Blouvlei suddenly seemed very important and dear to me. For the first time, the reality that it was my whole world, the only place I had ever known . . . had ever called home, hit me. Swift on the heels of that realization, came a bleak sadness. At the prospect of losing it, of no longer owning it.
A hush fell on the playground. All play had come to an unceremonious halt once again. Zombies stood where we had played. Stood staring at their hands. Then, as suddenly as we’d been stilled, a veritable stampede broke out, every child, pamphlet in hand, racing home. Racing there with a new urgency now.
‘Mama!’ I cried out. ‘Mama! Mama! Mama!’ I hollered, hand high up in the air. Hand holding the paper with the lethal words, I galloped all the way home.
Mama was waiting for me at the door, alarm written all over her face.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘What are these things the aeroplane dropped?
‘Look!’ I whispered, my heart in my mouth. ‘Look, here they are.’
She snatched one of the pamphlets from my hand. Her eyes, unaccustomed to reading scoured it for a full minute before she turned around and, going back inside the house, said:
‘He, tata kaMandisa, kha ujonge eli phepha. Hey, father of Mandisa, why don’t you take a look at this paper.’ Her voice was low with disbelief. ‘I told you there were things that plane was dropping off. Look, now,’ she said, ‘d’you see, what it was bringing us?’
‘What?’ The caterpillars above his eyes chased the thick forest of his hair, dangerously narrowing the tiny strip of forehead.
‘Here,’ and she handed him the leaflet.
‘Tyhini!’ exclaimed Tata, after a glance at it. ‘Tyhini!’ again, he shouted, ‘what are these boers saying, now? What terrible thing is this that they are saying?’
My parents, who never lost opportunity for praising my brother and me for a good deed, that day, not once did they thank me for bringing them that note. However, sensing a turbulence in them far greater than my little disappointment, I did not dwell on the oversight. Indeed, it was not until days later that the fact hit me. That, in the mad scramble, I’d been given no praise.
‘Where do they say they’re taking us?’ Mama asked.
‘I-iish!’ Tata said, ‘they’re playing children’s marbles, we’re not going anywhere.’ But the deep furrow that cleaved his brow, gainsaid the words of his mouth. My apprehension grew.
Just then, the clangorous sound of stout wood striking hollow metal rang out.
Like bees smoked out of their hive, the fathers and mothers of Blouvlei, the grandfathers and grandmothers too, every grownup in the location, poured out of the houses.
NKQO-NKQO!
NKQO NKQO-NKQO!
NKQO NKQO-NKQO!
Fast and furious, wood pounded on empty paraffin tins, Blouvlei’s summonses to a meeting filled the late afternoon air.
Then, into the clamorous air, came the high and piercing voices of unknown women ululating, accompanying the hollering gongs.
Yeye-e-ee-lee-e! Ye-yee-ee-eele-ee! It has drowned! It has drowned!
Ye-ee-yee-lee! Ifun’ amadoda-aa! It has drowned! It needs men!
The distress signal, trilling, a call to all residents of Blouvlei, reinforced the tin-pounding rallying cry to the gathering place, the open field near the dam.
Our parents swarmed to the meeting-place. There was no spring to their step, their shoulders were hunched and rounded as their suddenly too-long arms dangled limp and useless at their sides.
With Mama and Tata gone to the meeting, my anxiety soon subsided, displaced by more pleasurable undertakings. Even though the sun cast long shadows, telling me I should go indoors, Mama was not there to see whether I was in or out. She was not there to call me home. So, finding myself thus freed, I once more lost myself to the urgency of evening-play.
The sun dipped beyond the hills and sank, painting the far sky in fiery reds, blinding yellows and searing vermillions. In the afterglow, the hastily convened meeting sat.
As our play took place not far from the dam, now and then we would hear raised voices or even a shout. Even though we were engrossed in our games, we could not escape the anger of our parents, at war with the papers the aeroplane had dropped. Indeed, their wrath invaded the spaces where we hid, lost in the world of play. By and large, however, we kept a little off from the meeting as we did not want to remind our parents that we had not gone indoors.
Imperceptibly, peach turned to plum, another marker of the unusualness of the proceedings. With no streets and no street lighting therefore, Blouvlei knew well enough to conduct its business by the benevolence of the sun. This day, however, there was no thought of adjournment, to say nothing of cancellation. Instead, the meeting was soon held by candlelight. Scattered at random, several candles held in arms pushed up to the sky, gave pale and ghostly light to the strange goings-on. But as the pitch of night thickened, their etiolated light became more and more inadequate and ineffectual.
‘Here, Kwedini!’ Tat’uMavuthengatshi hailed Sakhele, who was passing by.
‘Take this,’ he said, giving him a key. ‘It opens the shed next to the shop. Go get us some wood, my boy,’ he growled. ‘Hurry!’
Soon, a full-blown fire was ablaze and, by its flickering light, the meeting carried on till very late that night. Relieved of parental supervision, we children were in paradise. That day, we chased fireflies and bats till late into the night.
Although no one knew this that Sunday, that was to be the first of a month of meetings, sometimes as many as three or four in a single day.
When that meeting was finally over, Tata and Mama called us in. They were both in a bad mood, which made Khaya whisper, ‘The meeting can’t have gone well.’
Tata’s grumbling soon confirmed those words.
‘Questions! Questions and more questions, all night long!’ he spat out, clearly displeased.
‘Ja!’ Mama agreed. ‘There sure was no lack of questions,’ she said. ‘But who had the answers?’
‘You’re right there,’ Tata said. ‘Those were downright uncooperative and stubborn. They out and out refused to make an appearance.’
They talked about the removals all night, till I fell asleep.
The next day, our parents sent representations to the government. The government refused to receive the delegation.
For weeks, following that first meeting, Tata took to coming home early, forgoing all overtime work. That was a tremendous sacrifice, indeed, for his wage at the Cape Town Docks was not high and he supplemented it by working overtime. Mama often said that Tata’s real wages came from the overtime and his job gave him but peanuts. But now, like everybody else, he had to attend the meetings and so couldn’t take any overtime work.
Meeting after meeting was called. But after several such intense meetings with indecisive resolutions and feeble outcomes
, our parents appealed for help to Mr Stanford and Mrs Ballinger and the other white men and women who had been the official Native Representatives in the parliament to which they themselves had no access.
But even that was all to no avail. The government would not listen to anyone’s appeals. The government had long made up its mind. Long, long ago. On the issue of black removals. Sure, once or twice, there were postponements. Instead of July, we moved in September. In the final analysis, however, move we did. As the government had said we would. All appeals and delegations had failed.
‘Mandisa! Khaya! Mandisa! Vukani! Vukani! Wake Up - Wake Up!’
Deep in sleep, I felt someone shake me roughly by the shoulders.
Fire! The house was on fire!
I leapt out of bed, to run for the door. Shack fires were common in Blouvlei.
Hands grabbed me. Strong arms enfolded me to the not too familiar, tobacco–smelling chest of my father.
Tata? Tata, hugging me? I knew the situation was far worse than a burning house. Something terrible had happened.
Then, it came to me: I was either dead or dying. Why else would my stern, never-demonstrative father be hugging me? Tata was no dog that romped around with puppies.
‘Mandisa,’ Tata said, still shaking me by the shoulders. I was fully awake now and saw that Mama and Khaya were in the house. Their movements were not frantic. There was no fire. There couldn’t possibly be. But then, what was the problem? my foggy brain asked.
‘Abelungu bayazidiliz’ izindlu zethu. Whites are pulling down our houses.’ Tata said the words gently, with no hint of emotion whatsoever.
I looked at Mama.
‘We have to hurry and pack up everything,’ Mama said. ‘Throw away anything for which you have no use!’ She, herself, was bent over a cardboard box, already half full with dishes.
It was long before sunrise on the first day of September. Tata, who left for work at half-past four, had raised the alarm and Blouvlei awoke to find itself under siege.
‘Come and see,’ Tata said, then taking Khaya and me by the hand, he led us out of the house.
Outside, the air was hushed, a steady drizzle beating on the still-black sand. In the grey half-light of a cloudy winters foredawn, foreign shapes loomed in the near distance. Menacing.
As soon as my eyes accustomed themselves to the poor light, they broke my windpipe, robbing me of breath. An army of invasion: a fleet of police. Vans, bulldozers and army trucks surrounded the location. Completely. In its entire vastness, Blouvlei was surrounded and contained.
Eyes peeled back wide, in horror, I watched. Abelungu men charged. Tin walls were torn down with the inhabitants of the shacks asleep inside some. Shacks came tumbling down, revealing Primus stoves alight, pots of mealie-meal porridge madly bubbling away in others.
Some of Blouvlei’s more stubborn residents chained themselves to the doors of their homes. But the door frames were pulled down just the same. Pulled down with those poor desperate souls chained right onto them.
Grandpa Mxube, who lived up near the top of the hill, broke an arm in one such scuffle. To the day he died, more than a decade later, he never fully recovered the use of that arm.
The pitiless, ruthless attack of the government people jolted Blouvlei into action. Our parents scurried to take more realistic, more aggressive, action. Defeat looked them squarely in the eye and they hurried to salvage what building material they could (not new when first used to build our Blouvlei homes and now rust-riddled and rotting), bits and pieces off their shacks, their homes. Their homes that, even as they fended off the attack, the army and the police and the university students volunteering for public service were snapping off like toys.
In the mad scurry and hustle of that day, somehow, Mama prevailed on Tata and a few other men and got them to help move Sis’ Lulu and her things.
‘If each family takes some of her things, by night we’ll have most of them in Nyanga,’ was how she persuaded them. She knew that if she asked even Tata to shoulder the full responsibility of moving Lulu, he would never agree to it . . . no one person would.
Hastily, to beat the eager demolishers and salvage what little they could of their shacks, our parents pulled down the houses themselves. With eyes bright with suppressed tears, our parents pulled down their homes, put the rusty nails in newspapers and wrapped the packets, using old doeks or pinafores; packed cardboard, zinc, poles and planks; strapped them into long unwieldy bundles, and carried them on their shoulders and on their heads.
Like imfecane fleeing Shaka more than a century ago, our parents trekked. Dejected and dispirited, but determined to build anew, they made the long journey through the Flats. From Retreat to Nyanga, going by way of back roads and by-roads, footpaths, barely-there, grass-overgrown dirt tracks, past the endless acres of farms taming the sandy Flats, where no trains or buses ran. Past Klip, Busy-Corner, and other out-lying settlements of Heathfield; past the farms that feed Diep River, Steurhof, Plumstead, Wittebomme, Wynberg and environs, they trod. In their hundreds. They trekked. Onto the sheep and maize farms of Ottery and past the chicken farms of Lansdowne, they plodded. A long line of wearied humanity: children, women and men, following their noses, going to a place they had never seen before, where they knew not what awaited them. They trekked. Leaving their lives flattened to nothing behind them. Government vehicles hounding them, bayonets prodding their backs; confused, bedraggled and spent, at last their eyes beheld the wilderness — the barren land the government had designated to be their new home.
We got here, and everything and everybody changed, especially Mama. In Guguletu, the new houses changed us. People believed they’d been bettered, and strove hard to live up to that perception. In their wood and zinc and cardboard houses with wooden windows, they’d needed no curtains or carpets or fancy, store-bought furniture. In the brand-new brick houses of the townships, with their glass windows, concrete floors, bare walls and hungry rooms, new needs were born. But how to satisfy these needs? The wages of fathers had certainly not been augmented. Soon, all our mothers, who had been there every afternoon to welcome us when we returned from school, were no longer there. They were working in white women’s homes. Tired, every day when they returned. Tired and angry.
In time we did not remember coming back from school to mothers waiting with smiles.
10.05 PM — Wednesday 25 August 1993
It was getting late. Very late. Still, of the three men in the house, only Lunga was home. Not my husband, Dwadwa, Father-of-Siziwe. But about him, I was not that worried. He works in the Docks in Cape Town and it is not unusual for him to be late. But where was Mxolisi? Not for the first time, I asked myself what it was that made him so different from the other two children. How many times had I not spoken to him about his gadding about? About his being the eldest and therefore the one who had to set a good example for the others? Why was he so consistent in being disobedient?
Siziwe had a pot of mngqusho (samp) simmering when I came. I was rested now. As rested as I could get with all that had happened to me earlier that evening. I waited, hoping that Mxolisi and Dwadwa would come so we could all eat together. Hoping, though, that Mxolisi would be the first to make an appearance. I was sick and tired of hearing Dwadwa’s mouth on the subject of Mxolisi’s long foot that wrote itself on all the streets and corners of Guguletu . . . day and night. What had made Mxolisi stop confiding in me? And when had that wall of silence sprung between us? I couldn’t remember. He used to tell me everything . . . and then, one day I woke up to find I knew almost nothing about his activities or his friends.
To take my mind off the worry about my son, I sorted out
some of the washing and soaked whites and fast colours. That meant I’d have less work when I did the laundry, come Saturday. But it also meant I’d have to wake up half an hour earlier the next morning. I didn’t mind that. Besides, anything was miles better than the frantic feeling that enfolded me. Indeed, I’d do the laundry now, if it would help me escape the overwhelming anxiety. But I knew I couldn’t do that, though. Just a fanciful thought. I’d wake up with not one article up on the line — Guguletu thieves took even face cloths left on the line at night. Next, I took out clothes waiting to be ironed and started on those. That would keep me going . . . till my husband came.
Dwadwa returned with a large packet under his arm. Meat. Spleen. He’d had no trouble walking home from Netreg, the train station nearest this part of Guguletu, less than ten minutes away from the house. Yes, there were police vans lying in wait at the station, when he got off the train. But the police were in the cars, not bothering anybody. Yes, he had also seen three or four more vans while walking home. And all those Saracens at the Police Station, inside the yard as well as outside.
‘You don’t know what a botheration I had getting here,’ I said. Then narrated my story to him.
I was glad I had delayed dishing up. This mngqusho business, everyday, can be boring. I skinned the ‘poor man’s liver’, grateful that Dwadwa was such a good provider. Not many in Guguletu could boast of eating meat more than once a week, on Sunday. Indeed, there were some who did not have even that. But we had meat two or three times during the week. Mostly offal. But still, meat. Now, I seasoned and fried the spleen. Just as I would liver — keeping it a minute or two longer on the stove, because it is thicker.
Everything was ready now. Still, I delayed dishing up. Just a little longer. Hoping against hope that the boy would come. Now and then I took a peek out of the kitchen window or went to the back door to listen for voices. However, each time, the same stubborn silence greeted my investigation. A sure sign that Lunga was still alone, or with his books — which comes to the same thing.